I think it’s kind of funny that the second anime I decide to make a review of is another sports anime. I think there is something about this genre that is fun to analyze. Especially when the shows are more grounded and reflect things I’ve seen/experienced in high school sports. That being said this is also my first review of a seasonal anime, which I normally try to avoid but I was pretty excited for Seiin as I’ve become quite the volleyball fan this past year.
But first I’d like to address the big orange and black elephant in the room. This show will probably always be compared to Haikyuu, and I personally found myself making these comparisons as I watched it. I do think there’s enough differences between the two, and I will try to refrain from making comparisons, but I do believe it’ll inevitably happen. Also, if you are looking for a show to hold you over between seasons of Haikyuu I do think this is a good choice.
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Story (Some Spoilers ahead)__
I think the story is about as run of the mill as you can get with 12-episode sports animes now. That’s not to say this is a bad thing though. But the format is generally a school gets a gifted set of new players, which makes them and interesting team to others in the prefecture. This interest general allows for them to get a practice match with a higher/highest ranked school in the prefecture and it develops a sort of rivalry that is settled by the end of the show. This structure while common is still engaging to the audience if built upon correctly.
Which I think Seiin does a fantastic job at making this dynamic work. The rival school’s motives are delved into way more in this show, and the sense of rivalry goes past just Seiin being a good school suddenly. And it delves more into the concept of geniuses of a sport. It brings out more of the rival schools characters roots and aspirations of wanting to play on the center stage of nationals. Which happens to be the same goal as Seiin, but the reasons are more character driven for Fukuho. There are some more important plot points that get resolved earlier on, but I feel like they go more towards character development, so I’ll touch on it here and elaborate more later possibly.
The show is tonally very different at the start compared to the ending. The start has a more Stars Align approach of having mystery surrounding the background of our main character Haijima. This being that he drove a fellow student to attempting suicide, and this leads Haijima to move back his hometown, Fukui, where he reunites with Yuni Kuroba. This beginning portion of the show is paced insanely fast too because they try to blitz through middle school but also set up drama between Haijima and Kuroba going into high school. This drama stems from Haijima being a gifted setter, and Kuroba being too affected by nerves and emotions when playing the game. This throws a wrench in their chemistry during their first tournament, and it follows to high school leading Haijima to not wanting to play as he feels like a detriment to teams.
We as the viewer know Haijima isn’t the entire issue as he is a genius setter, but he must overcome his stubbornness of wanting to do everything. While Kuroba needed to learn to be more confident in himself and become the ace Seiin needed the most. And this is the big arc the two of them go through learning that they need each other to make this work out.
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Characters__
I think the best way to speak of the characters is to just break them down almost one by one as it’s a bit necessary to show what I meant in the story section. Along with the show being more character driven than story driven.
Kimichika Haijima: He’s a genius setter that has a passion for the game that extends to winning at all costs. This put a huge burden on himself in the past when teammates didn’t want to be under his rigorous rule. Does this sound kind of familiar? Well if you’ve watched Haikyuu he’s very similar to Tobio Kageyama. But not to a fault really since he holds more of a burden than not getting into the high school, he wanted to be in. Haijima goes through the trauma of feeling responsible for almost causing a friend of him to kill himself. This burden holds him back when he realizes his new middle school team isn’t good enough to win unless he did all the work. And would eventually continue to hold him back once on Seiin since some people left the team due to his arrival.

Spoiler, click to view

This causes Haijima to visit the Tokyo high school he was originally supposed to go to with Kuroba. Only for them to find out that the “attempted suicide” was fake. And the goal of this suicide was something his teammates went in on to hopefully bring Haijima down to earth and hurt his ego. Along with finding out that the person who was used as the scapegoat wanted to quit volleyball but couldn’t outright quit.

This side plot would further help Haijima towards becoming a better team player along with the help of the rest of the seiin team. Learning that he has a reliable team and that he can make them prosper is a big part of his arc. Things like sacrificing being the setter in games to have better defense, learning to use all his attacking options, and lastly learning to trust his teammates are all factors that make Haijima a better teammate and player. Yuni Kuroba: It’s hard to directly describe Kuroba as he’s a bit of a coward for most of the show, but he is a capable player that learns to trust Haijima and himself. A lot of Kuroba’s arc ties into Haijima’s arc as the show presses this duo and their growth together a lot of the time. And it mostly starts to flourish and take form after their practice match with Fukuho. Where Kuroba see’s how impactful Subaru is. This sets Kuroba’s goal to becoming more like Subaru into motion to become a better ace for Seiin. And this goal is pushed onto Haijima as well since the ace can’t flourish without their setter. It is hard to talk about Kuroba without also talking about Haijima as the show gives these two the most spotlight for the Seiin side of things. And I think this duo works well as they are both flawed players at first. They have things that hold them back from being star players in the first half like Kuroba’s fear of being useless, and Haijima’s fear of bringing people to no longer wanting to play volleyball. These two struggle and flourish together, which makes for the pay off in their matches so much better as you see the two develop. The next two I want to talk about are the antithesis to our main characters in Subaru Mimura and Mitsuomi Ochi. These two are both apart of Fukuho Technical High School, which is a school that has never missed the spring national tournament. So, you are aware this school is capable and a tough opponent, but their motivations revolve around these two characters the most. Subaru Mimura is a powerhouse of an ace and a fellow genius. And his goal is to bring Ochi to the center stage of nationals this year as they’re both 3rd years. Subaru also has some issue in that he had surgery on both of his knees in the past, and later in the show it is revealed he’ll probably need to have more surgery done. This to me hit right at home as I’m also someone who has had surgery due to playing a sport, and it prevented me from continuing to play this sport afterwards. So, the frustration and fear Subaru feel at times in this show felt even more impactful to me. As losing something you love to do (especially something you’re good at) hurts so much even if its only temporarily. Ochi is a character that is a simple but ties more into Subaru kind of like how Kuroba ties to Haijima. But this dynamic is different from the Fukuho boys in that Ochi doesn’t actual play the game and is instead their manager. He is the moral support to the team, and the driving factor of Subaru’s goals for nationals. Since Ochi isn’t as strong of a player as Subaru or most of the other boys at Fukuho he was only given the manager position. But he constantly is there to give the team that morale boost in simple ways like getting water, towels, and even coming up with strategies for the team. He is like Haijima in that his game knowledge is strong, and he is like Kuroba in that he is there to strengthen and support the pillar of their respected teams. I like how the dynamic of these characters and their rivalry almost mirror aspects of each other, and they are fleshed out and shown enough to really impact that final match between the two teams. While there are other characters in this show that impact and help our main characters, I felt highlighting these 4 were the most important. Pacing This show has insane pacing which can be a good and bad thing. For me I normally hate when animes do time skips and fast-forwarding as it can remove significant development or take away from what I was watching. This show not only has that but also focusses more on speeding up matches and other parts of the show to move it along. Which isn’t a bad thing as the only match that matters are the finals match between Seiin and Fukuho. And I know why most of the matches/games are skipped around and almost sped through. For one this show is more focused on its characters rather than the storylines behind the whole show. And secondly, it’s because Volleyball is a rally sport meaning it can be a back and forth brawl, but you don’t always need to show every point like Haikyuu does. As you can keep the game close and show the highlights or changes in the tide on break points and other points of that nature. Still for me I think how fast the show is at the start can be hard to watch as they’re trying to set up characters but also rush to high school. So it is hard to ignore how fastly paced this show can be as they try to cram all of its story in 12 episodes. Animation/Design I think like most 12-episode animes there are ups and downs in the animation process. Some episodes have this crisp and impactful animation behind what is happening in the matches, and in other episodes we get less of this and more still images and displaying what the score is. We get moments of pure genius in the impact of a serve like in Haikyuu and Ping Pong the Animation, but then will get crappy still images/frames that people would call Dragon Ball Superesc. But I don’t think this is something exclusive to this show and is more of an issue with seasonal animes in general. Hell, even Haikyuu ran into this issue in its past season where a couple episodes looked bad the whole run time. So, it is hard to nickpick and be too angry about these moments and it is better to watch for the explosive and kinetic moments this show gives us. Character design is something I’ll loosely touch on because I do like the art style of these characters. They are distinct from each other and I think the show uses the different heights and body types that were designed to their advantages in the games. Closing Thoughts 2.43 Seiin High School was a bit of an emotional ride. The characters are some of the better ones I’ve seen in sports animes in that they drive the story forward and keep the stakes high until the end. The progression and arc these characters go through are not only relatable/things we have seen, but they still stand out and can be developed on further. I like how the show is not afraid of giving us darker scenes and concepts as most sports animes are happy fun times for most of their airtime. And I would love to see this show get a second season especially since I think national tournament arcs can have the most impact. But at the time of writing this the Manga/light novel has been on hiatus for a while, and obviously there’s been no announcement of a second season yet. So, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed in hopes of this show getting a second season.

But even without a second season I think this show serves its purpose and is a fantastic watch. Like I said earlier if you need a show for that volleyball fix while the next season of Haikyuu is in development this is the show for you. And I hope I convinced just a couple more people to give this show a watch as it has a lot of good going for it that I couldn’t fully touch on here